Sheldon Shelton, JD, PT
by TheSwingOfThings
Summary: A tale about what happens when one of the only people to reach adulthood without training a single pokemon is also the only person who believes that his daughter, a professional trainer who went missing in an especially dangerous area that only advanced trainers can enter, isn't dead. Alternatively titled: "Adventures in Allergies: the Pokemon Edition."


Sheldon Shelton was an unfortunate child. His whole life, he'd been so horribly allergic to pokemon that his doctors forbade him from ever training one. His parents had been obliged to send their pokemon to live with relatives, though they visited them whenever they could. Because of this, Sheldon Shelton often felt that he was an afterthought in his parents' lives, and that he could never measure up to the joys of a pokemon's companionship. He began to envy them.

Sheldon Shelton's allergies took a toll on his love life. He couldn't get two minutes into a conversation with a charming or beautiful woman before she brought up her team and he was forced to admit his weakness. And though they were always sympathetic and they were always polite, they never called him back after finding out that dating him would require giving away their pokemon. Sheldon Shelton didn't blame them. But he did begin to resent their pokemon.

Sheldon Shelton was intelligent and driven. He worked hard, applied himself, and, with some generous financial backing from his parents, became a lawyer. Though his initial passion had been for the judicial system, he'd forsaken that dream upon discovering that his allergy to pokemon witnesses would cripple his ability to do his job. So he settled for a safe, quiet, and pokemon-free job writing contracts. It was tedious and time consuming, but it paid his bills and kept him out of the emergency room.

Sheldon Shelton eventually found a woman for whom a lack of pokemon wasn't a problem. Her name was Rebecca, and she was a pediatrician who'd been a talented water pokemon trainer as a youth, but after a traumatic experience wherein she almost drowned, she'd become terrified of bodies of water, and, consequently, unable to train her ocean dwelling pokemon. Their release had been devastating, and sometimes Sheldon would wake up in the middle of the night and see his wife crying in her sleep, but then when she woke up she'd always tell him that her decision to release them had been best for everyone involved.

Sheldon Shelton and his wife had a daughter after a few years of marriage. They named her Olivia. She was a healthy, rambunctious little child who had her father's eyes and her mother's lips, and she loved pokemon more than anything else. She cried the day her mother told her that she couldn't keep a pokemon in the house. That night, Sheldon Shelton asked his wife if she wanted a divorce. His wife said no, of course not, but she understood that this was Sheldon's way of trying to be kind to his daughter. If she only lived with her mother, then she could have a pokemon. If she continued to live with her father, then she would have to choose between her family and her passion.

Sheldon Shelton took a deep breath and fought back tears on the day his eleven year old daughter packed her bags to leave. They'd all talked about it, and they'd finally found a compromise: boarding school. Olivia would keep her pokemon at the school when she came home for vacations, but she would be able to train it all during the school year. Sheldon Shelton knew very little about pokemon, so his wife did the shopping. He asked her to find something strong, and cute, and rare, and insisted that his wife buy the best she could find regardless of how expensive it was. After all, Sheldon Shelton might not like pokemon, but he loved his daughter, and he wanted her to know that he would sacrifice anything for her.

His wife bought a noibat, which Olivia loved. They'd shipped the pokeball to her room, and insisted that she only open the ball only once she'd called her parents and put them on speaker. When she finally got the ball opened, both parents regretted their decision, because both Olivia and her noibat shrieked like banshees. They hung up, and Olivia later sent them a long text consisting of only less-than signs and threes, which Sheldon Shelton and his wife later realized were meant to symbolize a constant stream of hearts.

Olivia did her parents proud. She had her father's intelligence and her mother's natural ability with pokemon, and as such she was a student whose academics were exceeded only by her abilities as a trainer. Her noibat, whom she'd named Stella, was exceptionally strong (Sheldon Shelton had insisted that his wife buy the strongest noibat of the bunch, so she'd purchased the one with dragon pulse, super fang, and a five star rating for genetic potential), and combined with Olivia's ability as a trainer, the two won the overwhelming majority of their matches.

By the time she was sixteen, Olivia was being scouted by professional trainers. She'd amassed a team of capable pokemon, and she used them well. There was talk of her forgoing her studies for a year to compete in tournaments across the country. After all, the grand prize was a full ride scholarship, and even a decent ranking would be sure to look good on a college application. When his daughter asked for permission to take a year off and train pokemon, Sheldon Shelton begrudgingly consented. It would mean that he wouldn't be able to see his daughter for an entire year, and it would mean that she almost certainly was headed down the path of a professional pokemon trainer and he would get to see her even less, but Sheldon Shelton understood that pokemon were an integral part of his daughter's life and that she should be allowed to embrace that. So Sheldon Shelton, the man who couldn't be around pokemon, was now dependent upon them to ensure that his daughter would be safe as she traveled and trained with some of the most successful-and competitive-trainers around. Sheldon Shelton hoped that the things he'd heard about how wonderful and loyal and amazing pokemon are were true, because he needed Olivia's team to keep her safe.

Sheldon Shelton learned first hand how loyal pokemon can be when, a month after Olivia had left, Stella, now a massive noivern, came crashing through their window at midnight, screeching and bleeding all over. Sheldon Shelton's throat began swelling immediately, and his wife dialled 911 for two separate ambulences as both he and Stella lost consciousness.

Three hours later, Sheldon Shelton woke up in a hospital bed, with Rebecca sitting next to him, puffy-eyed. He asked if it was about Olivia. She said that Stella was gravely wounded, but that the psychics had pulled enough information from the depths of her mind to get an idea of what had happened. Sheldon Shelton began to panic, and demanded to know what they saw. As soon as he did, he heard a voice in his head.

 _Olivia Shelton is missing, and though a search party is currently looking in the area where she disappeared, she is presumed dead._


End file.
